My commentary on Shroud of Turin related matters. I am an Australian evangelical Christian in my 70s. I am persuaded by the evidence that the Shroud of Turin is the burial sheet of Jesus Christ and bears His crucified and resurrected image.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

No outline #14: The man on the Shroud: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!

[Above (enlarge)[3]: Extract of front trunk and thighs area of the Shroud man's image (Shroud Scope: Durante 2002 Vertical). As can be seen there is no outline of the image. Readers can verify this for themselves by clicking on this (or any) image area of Shroud Scope and continually enlarging it by clicking on that part of the image, until maximum magnification is reached. They will find that as the image is enlarged it becomes more diffuse and no outline ever appears - because there isn't one!]

No outline. A unique feature of the Shroud man's image is a total lack of outline[4]. Painters outline a figure before painting it[5], but there is no outline on the Shroud[6]. All medieval artists used outlines[7] and it was not until the nineteenth century Impressionists that artists began to rely less on outlines to give shape to their works[8]. Yet even the Pointillists, the most extreme branch of Impressionism, used outlines to indicate where they should place their dots of colour[9]. The legs on the frontal image and the greater part of the dorsal image are indefinite and fade away in a blur, unlike any painting[10]. All paintings reveal indications of the artist's technique, such as brush strokes, sketched outlines, corrections and layers of colors, but even under magnification, no evidence of these can be detected[11]. All human paintings show outline and shading, and even if deceives the unaided eye, it becomes evident under the microscope[12]. But the image on the Shroud has no outline nor shading, even under a microscope[13]. Infrared thermographs of the Shroud taken by STURP in 1978 did not detect evidence of any underlying paint structures nor outline[14], as would be expected if the Shroud image were a painting[15].

Historical. In 1201 the Overseer of Constantinople's relic collection, Nicholas Mesarites (c. 1163-1216), delivered a speech in which he stated that among those relics were:

That Mesarites was referring to the Shroud is evident from his calling it the sindones in which Jesus' dead body had been "wrapped ... naked"[17]. It is not known why Mesarites used the plural sindones "shrouds"[18], except that he also mentioned a towel (cheiromaktron) in the relic collection which supposedly bore an image of Jesus "not wrought by hand"[19]. So it seems that by "sindones" Mesarites was including other claimed burial cloths of Jesus that were in Constantinople's relic collection. But the adjective aperilepton [Greek a "not" + peri "around" + lepton "thin"[20] - compare aperitmeton "uncircumcised"[21] (Acts 7:51)], means "un-outlined"[22], "un-outlined"[23] or "uncircumscribed"[24]. This can only be the Shroud man's image which uniquely (at least before the 19th century) has no outline[25]. So this is further proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud was in Constantinople by at least 1201, more than a half-century before its earliest possible1260 radiocarbon date[26]!

Problems for the forgery theory. (see first and previous three: #11, #12 & #13). Impossible to paint the Shroud man's image on linen without an outline. Paul Vignon (1865-1943), a French Professor of Biology and an artist[27], tried to paint an image on linen as faint and devoid of outline, as the man on the Shroud is and failed[28]. In 1967, Leo Vala, a professional photographer and an agnostic[29] made the first three-dimensional reproduction of the Shroud face by projecting a Shroud negative photograph onto a lump of clay and sculpting it[30].

[Above (enlarge): "British photographer Leo Vala displays the photographic representation he has produced of the face of Christ. He used a unique process to develop the Turin Shroud's imprint into a three-dimensional picture. (Photo by Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images). 23rd January 1967"[31].]

Vala published his experiment in the March 8, 1967 issue of Amateur Photographer, stating in the article:

"I've been involved in the invention of many complicated visual processes, and I can tell you that no one could have faked that image. No one could do it today with all the technology we have. It's a perfect negative. It has a photographic quality that is extremely precise." (my emphasis)[32]

Vala became a critic of anyone who thought the image could have been produced by human hands[33]. For a forger to have created the Shroud image without outlines and in negative, "boggles the mind"[34]!

Radiation caused the Shroud man's un-outlined image. In 1998 Dr August Accetta injected himself with the medical radioactive isotope Technetium-99 (Tc-99][35] and then his body was scanned by nuclear radiation imaging[36].

[Right (enlarge): Nuclear radiation image of Dr. August Accetta[37]. The `V' shape over Accetta's genitals is a protective shield and the projections from his abdomen and chest are some of his internal organs, which absorbed more of the Tc-99[38]. As can be seen, Accetta's radiation image has no outline, like the Shroud image[39].]

The result was a full-body radiation image, which shared characteristics of the Shroud man's image, including having no outline[40]. Accetta does not claim that the Shroud man's image was necessarily the result of nuclear radiation, nor that it reproduced exact characteristics of the Shroud image, just that the human radiation model generated a number of characteristics which parallel the image on the Shroud[41]. This indicates that some type of radiation was the cause of the Shroud man's outline-less image[42] (as we will also see in "X-ray" #20). But since "... radiation of wavelengths other than visible light were [sic] discovered in the early 19th century" (my emphasis)[43], a medieval or earlier forger could not have created by electromagnetic or nuclear radiation the man's image on the Shroud[44].

Radiocarbon date of the Shroud as "mediaeval ... 1260-1390" was wrong. That the Shroud was in Constantinople by at least 1201 is further evidence that the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390"[45] was wrong. And if wrong, then

[Above (enlarge): From left to right, Prof. E. Hall (Oxford), Dr M. Tite (British Museum) and Dr R. Hedges (Oxford) announcing on 13 October 1988 that the Shroud had been radiocarbon dated to "1260-1390!"[46].]

fraudulent[47]. That is because 1260-1390 is 1325 ± 65 years[48], the mid-point of which, 1325[49], is a mere ~30 years[50], before the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history at Lirey, France, in ~1355[51]. Shroud sceptics seized on 1325 as the date of the Shroud[52]. They were certain that the Shroud had to be a medieval fake because the improbability would be "astronomical"[53], "one in a thousand trillion"[54] and indeed "totally impossible"[55] that the Shroud could be first-century yet have a 13th-14th century radiocarbon date, let alone the `bull's-eye' date of 1325[56]. But the flip-side is that since the Shroud is authentic (as the evidence overwhelmingly indicates)[57], and therefore first century, then the improbability would be "astronomical," "one in a thousand trillion" and indeed "totally impossible" that the Shroud could have a 1260-1390 radiocarbon date!

Agnostic pro-authenticist art historian Thomas de Wesselow considers fraud in the Shroud's radiocarbon dating to be a real possibility (albeit by sample-swapping), because of the "1325 ± 65 years" date:

"The third possibility is that a fraud was perpetrated, that genuine Shroud samples were deliberately swapped with cloth of a later date ... Most sindonologists regard these fraud theories as plainly incredible. Some, like Ian Wilson, refuse to contemplate such `unworthy' accusations. However, scientific fraud is by no means unknown, as the editors of science journals are well aware. ... One important consideration weighs in favour of the possibility of deception. If the carbon-dating error was accidental, then it is a remarkable coincidence that the result tallies so well with the date always claimed by sceptics as the Shroud's historical debut. But if fraud was involved, then it wouldn't be a coincidence at all. Had anyone wished to discredit the Shroud, '1325 ± 65 years' is precisely the sort of date they would have looked to achieve" (my emphasis)[58].

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